Saturday, October 10, 2015

Weekly Recap



In light of last week’s small weight gain, I’d like to take another moment (in addition to what I said in last week’s recap post) and remind everyone that just because you gain some weight doesn’t mean it’s a “bad” weight gain.  This was proven to me after I did some math with my body weight and my body fat %.  I lost almost an entire pound of fat while gaining 2 whole pounds of muscle.  That’s pretty freaking awesome in my book.  And it just makes me want to continue to rock my workouts and improve my body.  So I made sure to keep up the intensity with this week’s workouts.

Saturday: started off with the Thin Mint Sprint.  I was originally signed up to do the 10K but there’s no way I’m walking 6.2 miles in a boot.  No way.  So I emailed them and got myself dropped down to the 5K.  The 5K was an out-and-back route and the 10K was the 5K done twice.  As I was out there on the course, I took note of the fact that not a whole lot of people were doing a second out-and-back, which meant not a whole lot of people had signed up to do the 10K.  I will sign up for this race again next year, and I will register for the 10K again, but I hope to actually DO the 10K next year.  If the race field is like it was this year, I think I have a good chance of an AG award in the 10K next year!  Heck, even if I decide to just do the 5K.  3rd place in my AG for this year did it in 29-ish minutes.  I can knock out a 5K, if properly trained, in less than that easily.  Well, maybe not “easily,” but you get the idea.  Haha.
On top of the 5K, I did go to the gym and did my machines workout (upper body, abs and the abductor/adductor machines).
Sunday: To start this day off, since I didn’t get the swim done on Saturday, I made sure to go to the gym and get my swim done this day.  This week the time bumped up to 32 minutes or 1300 meters, whichever takes longer…and I got the 1300 done!  But, it took me 34 minutes.  It’s all good, though! 

SUNDAY FUNDAY TIME!!!!  Since even with the addition of more exercises last Sunday this workout still doesn’t take me 60 minutes to complete, I did some more hunting around on the internet and found even more exercises to add to the mix!  October 4th is No More Stolen Sisters Day.  This is primarily a Canadian awareness day, but now that I know about it, it’s something that means a lot to me.  What is No More Stolen Sisters Day?  It’s a day to raise awareness of the propensity of aboriginal/native Canadian and American women to be 3 times more likely to be a victim of violence and sexual assault by a perpetrator NOT of their own race.  Being just shy of ¼ Cherokee decent myself, this is a cause that does hit home a little bit for me.  So, I dedicated this day’s Sunday Funday workout to north American native women with the hopes that they stay strong in the face of adversity.
Later in the afternoon, I walked for 3 miles around my apartment complex.

Monday: I had my appointment with my doctor and he said I can take the boot off!!!!  To celebrate my liberation, I drove to the Riverside & Lamar area of Austin and walked just over 4 miles around LadyBird Lake hike and bike trail.  Later on, I went to the gym for my freestyle workout, buuuuuuut, I waited until like 5:30 to go to the gym and there were far, far too many people in the personal training area (where I do said freestyle workout) that I wouldn’t have been able to do the exercises I like to do without hitting someone on accident or us being in each others’ ways.  So, since I was cleared from the boot by my doctor this day, I had already decided I was going to do the elliptical for 20 minutes, so I just extended it a little and did 3 miles on the elliptical.
Tuesday: [mental] therapy day again!  I did my usual walking pre- and post-appointment and exceeded my basic 10,000 steps for the day, then went to the gym to make up for not being able to do my freestyle workout on Monday.  I started with 20 minutes (1.8 miles) on the elliptical, then did my workout with the addition of resistance band side steps.
I go into a kind of half-squat position when I do these and am not straight legged like the guy in the picture.  I also added non-weighted squats on the BOSU ball.  I put the ball part down and stood on the platform for the squats.  I also decided to add an ab exercise.  I used the adjustable cable machine in the personal training area and did woodchoppers with it.  To round off this super active day, I swam 1300 meters in 32minutes…2 minutes faster than Sunday’s swim of the same distance.
Wednesday: I went to the gym and started things off with spin class!  I haven’t taken a spin class in years and the last one I took was crap.  The instructor wasn’t very charismatic and didn’t inspire me to push myself, so I didn’t get much out of that class.  This day’s spin class, however, was GREAT!  The instructor was amazing and fun and kept up a constant chatter.  Loved it!  Then, I did my machines workout at the gym today.  Now that I’m out of the boot, I can add back in some lower body machines.  So, in addition to all the upper body machines I’ve been doing (plus the ab machine and the abductor/adductor machines, of course), I added the calf raise, leg extension, leg curl, leg press, and kickbacks on the leg press machine.  However, I probably won’t do the kickbacks in the future.  It just didn’t hit my glute muscles like I wanted it to.  I’ll have to find another exercise for that.  Any ideas? 

Thursday: I took this day as an “active rest day.”  What does that mean?  I means I didn’t do any exercise that could be considered as “strenuous.”  I was going to do the elliptical and then swim 1300 meters.  But, I decided that I wanted this to be an active rest day so that meant the swim was out.  So I just did the elliptical for 65 minutes and 5.6 miles.
Friday: I went to the gym and hit the elliptical for 65 minutes and 5.4 miles.  After that, I did a hodge podge workout consisting of these exercises:
• BOSU squats
• BOSU lunges
• front arm raises
• side arm raises
• woodchoppers
• side bends
• resistance band side steps
• TRX ab tucks
• TRX pistol squats
• TRX tricep extensions
• hammer curls
I really love this workout and will definitely be putting it into rotation along with my full body machines workout and my freestyle gym workout.  Oh and then there’s my home workout that is kettlebells and bodyweight exercises and pull ups and stairs.  So that’s 4 separate strength training workouts!

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Last Friday, I told you I went to the State Fair of Texas.  I had never been before and, in fact, hadn’t been to ANY state fair since I was in high school during the summer between my junior and senior years.  Not to reveal just how old I actually am, but that was 20 years ago.  I don’t remember the Oregon state fair being so obnoxious.  There were so many vendors of services and products that were beyond pushy and were just pissing me off and making the fair less and less fun that it already was to start off with.  One thing I did, for sure, enjoy was the food.  Me and my friend Sam started our food adventure with Slovacek’s Czech Stop on the way to the fair and got some fancy kolaches (so glad this place is an hour drive away from me or I’d be fat again in no time…seriously, if you’re driving in Texas and you’re on IH-35 between Dallas and Austin, I highly recommend you stop and get a couple kolaches!).  At the fair, I indulged in a small piece of some of the best bread pudding I’ve ever eaten, a piece of fried cheesecake, some kettlecorn and a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut bacon cheeseburger.  I kind of regret the burger just because it really wasn’t all that great.  I mean, it was GOOD, just not great like I was thinking it would be.    After all that indulging, you better believe I was soooooooo freaking happy to get back to my low calorie, low carb, intermittent fasting way of eating come Saturday.  Oh and not to mention the heartburn I had to deal with post-indulgence.  Ugh.  Just more motivation to keep eating the way I’ve been eating lately.

On Saturday I had a little continuation of the indulging.  I had way too many slices of pumpkin spice bread and a double serving of homemade crockpot beef brisket.  After that, I actually and truly was ready to be back to my usual restriction and schedule of eating.  I know that one or even two days of over eating do not spell disaster or backsliding.  The failure to nip that trend in the bud and the allowing of it to continue are what spells disaster.  And that I definitely will NOT be doing.  Despite the readiness to be back on plan, cravings were really difficult this week.  I struggled for most of the week with snacking on things I “shouldn’t have been” snacking on.  I mean, no junk, just extra calories from nuts and dried fruit mostly.  I never went over my 1550 calorie cap for any given day, but still…I do really like to stay below 1300.  As the week went on, my cravings did lessen and get much easier to deal with.

I want to say that this week, after last week’s gain, even though I was like 90+% okay with it (after doing the math), still bothered me on some lower level.  I want to say that for the majority of this week, every time I looked in the mirror I looked bloated.  I have no idea if this was just my mind messing with me, but it really got to me.  It really did a number on my self-esteem this week and I didn’t like it.  I really hate that I’m so sensitive to this kind of stuff.  I really want to hit my goal weight.  I was hoping to hit my goal weight before starting to really hit the muscle building process.  I was even thinking I might drop my goal weight by 5 pounds, but with last week’s apparent 2 lbs of muscle gain, I don’t think that’s really achievable.  And I’m okay with that.  I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be.  I do really love the look of strong muscles on myself.  But I am finding it really difficult to cut the fat off my body.  Maybe being out of the boot and actually being able to do cardio will help with that.  We’ll see.

Also, SHIN SPLINT!  Yes, I left the “s” off the end of that on purpose.  Why?  Because I only have one.  My left shin area is just fine, but my right shin is definitely…splinty.  I know it’s because all the stabilizing muscles in my right leg are severely lacking at the moment.  The shin splint will resolve itself eventually.  I probably should break out my lacrosse ball and do some fascia smoothing along my shin.  I should also probably do the homework that Airrosti had me do while I was seeing them a few years ago right as I was starting to run originally.  I know doing those 2 things will help immensely.

And now to the scale! 

Woohoooooooooo!  I lost 2 pounds and .3% body fat this week!  I am super happy with this.  I am now just 3.2 lbs away from my goal weight!!!

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